Coldplay - Moon Music (LP) - Clear Vinyl

Coldplay’s tenth LP lands with a familiar sparkle, but there is a lived-in warmth to it that makes the hugeness feel earned rather than imposed. Out on 4 October 2024 through Parlophone and Atlantic, Moon Music reunites the band with producer Max Martin, whose pop instincts again give the songs clean lines and bright edges. The cosmic thread that ran through Music of the Spheres is still here, yet the writing feels closer to the chest. Less concept art, more heart-on-sleeve connection.

The tone was set early by feelslikeimfallinginlove, a lead single the band road tested in stadiums days before its official June release. Heard live with tens of thousands singing the hook back, it made instant sense. On record, the synths are cool and glassy, Chris Martin’s falsetto comes in like a flare, and the chorus crests with that unmistakable Coldplay lift. It is the kind of song that makes strangers harmonic for three minutes, which is a trick they still pull better than most.

What keeps Moon Music engaging is how it balances that sky-reaching optimism with small, human details. There are intimate moments where piano and voice carry the weight, and you can hear the air around the instruments. Then a chorus opens and Jonny Buckland’s guitar glints like sunlight on water, Guy Berryman’s bass tucks in with a clean, unfussy groove, and Will Champion shifts from soft mallets to a driving four-on-the-floor that nudges the whole thing forward. The band trusts space more than it used to, and the mix lets the songs breathe. Martin the producer favours clarity over clutter, so even at full roar there is separation, a sense that each part knows its job.

Lyrically, the record sits in that classic Coldplay pocket of longing and uplift. Love is framed as renewal rather than rescue, and there is a gentle humour to a few lines that cuts the syrup. The melodies are immediate, but they also reward a few spins, especially in the bridges where the chord choices tilt slightly sideways before landing cleanly in the chorus. If you grew up on A Rush of Blood to the Head or found your way back with Everyday Life, you will hear familiar DNA, just refracted through later-era polish.

It would be hard to talk about Moon Music without the sustainability push that surrounds it. The band’s touring over the past few years has doubled as a rolling experiment in lower-impact shows, and that thinking carried into the physical release. Moon Music vinyl arrived on a recycled PET formulation rather than traditional PVC, with an EcoCD option as well. The details were widely reported by outlets like Billboard and NME, and while the manufacturing science can get dense, the gist is simple. They tried a different plastic, sourced from bottles, to reduce the footprint of a product fans still love to hold. If you are the type who scans the new-release wall at your local Melbourne record store, it is hard not to smile at the idea that empty drink bottles from gigs helped press a new Coldplay vinyl.

As a listening object, the Moon Music vinyl is a good spin. The pressing is quiet, the low end lands cleanly, and those choral swells bloom in the room. That matters, because these songs are built for communal spaces, even if the words often read like diary entries. It feels like a record designed to work in a kitchen at 11 pm and on a Brisbane oval with confetti cannons. That duality is Coldplay’s sweet spot. There are still moments that lean into the sugar, and if you are allergic to Big Feelings, nothing here will convert you. But the band sounds confident, not coasting.

Context helps. Chris Martin has said in interviews that Coldplay plan to cap their studio albums in the middle of this decade, which gives Moon Music a slight halo of final-act focus. It does not play like a farewell, more like a recommitment to what they do best. Big choruses, clean melodies, and a stubborn belief that music can lift a room full of strangers a few inches off the ground.

If you collect Coldplay albums on vinyl, this one sits neatly next to Viva la Vida and Music of the Spheres, and it adds a nice talking point about format innovation. If you like to buy Coldplay records online, most shops have stocked multiple colourways and that rPET edition. For crate diggers hunting vinyl records Australia wide, it is already a staple in the new-release racks, the kind of LP you can recommend to a friend with a new turntable. Moon Music does not try to rewrite the band’s story. It simply tells it with clear eyes and a full heart, which is exactly why it works.